Home projects and schools

As a Yuman, I've completed six home remodeling projects. Some I did myself. A couple were completed by a talented handyman. For some I had reputable remodeling contractors bid.
 
My home upgrading efforts help me understand (and explain) why, despite seeming to have no basis in logic, school district unifications will not free more dollars for classrooms. This conclusion challenges common sense. It contradicts what business folks preach. Yet study after study reports greater non-classroom costs in large K-12 districts than in smaller districts.
 
Let's first understand the make up and constraints of schools. Simply put, districts get marching orders from the state, federal government, accrediting agencies and parents. External forces determine virtually everything that happens in schools - programs, budgeting methods, acceptable workers, etc. School districts operate with little freedom about most issues, activities or ways of doing business.
 
Take my remodeling experiences as an analogy. By size and complexity schools fall into groupings comparable to home improvement projects. That is, school districts vary in ways like whether I do a project myself, call on a handyman or turn a project over to a contractor expert.
 
Accordingly, students can be taught by someone like a home improvement do-it-yourselfer. The one-room school schoolmarm comes to mind (or home schooling). Meanwhile relatively small districts find multiple (mostly mandated) operations typically led by multi-competent generalists. They are versed in and can manage several operations - like my handyman.
 
Larger districts require different working relationships. Here, experts must manage and keep watch on specialized operations at multiple sites with many employees. Thus larger districts require leaders with specialized backgrounds and training in single operational areas - similar to the tradesmen (e.g., plumbers, carpenters, electricians) of general contractors.
 
Now it's your turn. Estimate home improvement costs when completed by a competent DIYer (you), if you hire an all-purpose handyman and, third, when general contractors get the job.
 
It's good enough if you answer that costs are lowest if you are relatively capable and complete the job yourself, more for an experienced handyman and greatest for the general contractor and her tradesmen.
 
So how does this help us understand that a dozen years ago a local study found a likely 28 percent increase in administrative costs should all districts within YUHSD unify? The figure would change today with the state's proposal for three school districts. But the difference would still take dollars away from classrooms.
 
Today's Yuma-area school district leaders are talented handymen. Few are highly-tuned specialists. Most watch over several areas. Like my home project jack-of-all-trades, they get less marketplace pay than specialists.
 
So to replace these skilled, trained generalists and hire specialists for them will cost more. As business models predict, the costs will increase further because each must compete for a relatively small pool of highly qualified skilled personnel against other like-sized Arizona districts.
 
Business leaders offer another seemingly sound argument for unification as a way to produce more dollars for classrooms. Most believe that larger organizations would eliminate formerly duplicated services and products. They say that the owner of a newly merged business would pour over the combined balance sheet. The proprietor would sell off unprofitable divisions and stop turning out loss-making products.
 
Why not the same for schools? Simply, schools can't rid themselves of wayward children or slow learners or upset parents, et al. State and federal regulations prevent elimination of these possibilities even if school personnel wished them to disappear. That constraint ends any prospect for merger savings on this point.
 
Meanwhile the few activities that might be abolished (e.g., athletics, close-by bus transportation) invariably set off public outcries. Businesses fail to appreciate this latter reality since they seldom face comparable uproars. Restaurants, for example, can drop menu selections and newspapers can eliminate columnists.  And few people would protest these changes. Certainly any protest against these business decisions would pale against the abusive crescendo sometimes targeted at public bodies.
 
School districts are complex organizations. They are mandated by law to operate on different principles than are for-profit businesses. It is these constraints of law and the law of supply and demand - for professional specialists - that combine to make school district mergers more costly … at the expense of our classrooms.


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Gary Knox is a retired Yuma area school superintendent and guest columnist for The Sun.